


Green-Eyed Monster

by iselsis



Series: Tim needs snuggles [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Brother Acquisition, Brotherly Bonding, Cuddling & Snuggling, Enemy to Caretaker, Fluff, Gen, Good Bro Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason's Death, Lazarus Pit (DCU), Platonic Cuddling, Protective Jason Todd, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake is Robin, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28149216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iselsis/pseuds/iselsis
Summary: Jason thinks that fate has smiled down on him when he finds Tim Drake, the fucking brat who had thenerveto replace him, injured and alone in Crime Alley, but things don't go the way he planned. Maybe that was for the best, though.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Tim needs snuggles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2056107
Comments: 76
Kudos: 1120
Collections: Jason and Tim Enemy-to-Caretaker





	Green-Eyed Monster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [envysparkler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysparkler/gifts).



> Me: *writes time travel whump fic*  
> Envy: You know what you should do? This, but with Tim and Jason
> 
> Me: *writes Tim getting cuddles fic and fear gas is involved*  
> Envy: You know what you should do? This, but with Tim and Jason
> 
> Envy: *looks at heaping pile of alternate Titans Tower meetings for Tim and Jason she's already written* You know what I should do? This, but with Tim and Jason
> 
> Guys, I think we need to have an intervention.

Jason leaped over another empty alley and landed on the rough gravel on the next roof. The Scarecrow was out of Arkham again, since Batman refused to kill him, so everyone who wasn’t working for him was staying indoors, even the usual Crime Alley scum. Jason had nearly stopped a mugging at the beginning of the night, but both the mugger and the victim had gotten the emergency alert that Scarecrow was loose and run in separate directions before Jason could drop into the alley. He was half tempted to track the rogue down and put a bullet through his head just for something to _do_ , but Batman would certainly be there, and Jason didn’t feel like tumbling with him. It would be fifty-fifty odds on whether or not he could beat Bruce in a hand-to-hand fight, and if he lost…Jason didn’t fancy getting thrown into Arkham, not until he’d killed the Joker at least.

He was about to give up and turn in for the night when he heard a young whimper.

Jason spun, hand dropping to his gun and scanning the rooftop for the kid and whoever was hurting them, but there was nothing.

Jason drew his gun and marched over to the fire escape, but it was empty, as were the alleys on both sides and the streets in the front and back. If it weren’t for the fact that he was in Gotham, he might have shrugged it off and moved along, but it was called Crime Alley for a reason, and no kid was getting trafficked on his watch.

The kid was quiet, though, mouth covered by a gag or a hand, or maybe just too frightened to make another noise, or just _dead_. But dammit, Jason needed some kind of indication of where to look. There was no squeal of tires as the kidnapper’s van got away, no ragged breaths as the kid bled out, no—

There was a small shadow, crammed between the air conditioning units and trembling violently, roughly the size of a young teenager.

Jason stepped closer cautiously. Crime Alley kids were jumpy little shits, and the smart ones—the ones who lived—usually carried a weapon of some kind. Then again, the smart ones were silent. He probably didn’t have to worry about a taser or gun.

The kid gave a muffled cry of fear that turned to pain when they—he, Jason was pretty sure—flinched hard.

Jason breathed a curse and quickly unsnapped his helmet. The bright red mask was meant to strike fear into the heart of anyone who saw it, but sometimes that worked a bit too well. He still wore a domino underneath it, but it was far less intimidating than the Red Hood.

“Hey, kid, calm down. I’m not going to hurt you,” he soothed, kneeling five or so feet away to keep from cornering the kid too much. “Someone beat you up?”

“G-go away!” the boy gasped, his voice cracking with puberty and terror.

Jason tucked the gun back into the holster and held both his hands up where the kid could easily see them. “I’ll leave as soon as I know you’re safe. You got an adult I can drop you with?”

Another flinch. Homeless or abused, then.

“I can take you to a shelter,” Jason offered. A _Wayne_ shelter, and didn’t that just grate his nerves, but for the long list of reasons Jason hated Bruce, he wasn’t a trafficker, and he kept his facilities as clean as places got in Gotham. “Somewhere safe for the night. No cops or social workers.”

“I’m--” The kid gasped and suddenly clutched at his side. An injury? “—fine. Please, please don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t. I don’t hurt kids. Come here, let me help.”

Jason edged a bit closer and reached out invitingly, but the boy just yelped and pulled back even farther into the crevice. Jason frowned and edged closer. If the kid was hurt, then he needed medical attention. It wouldn’t be hard to muscle him off the roof and a few blocks away to Leslie’s clinic, and with his helmet on, she wouldn’t recognize him unless Bruce had told her who the Red Hood really was. Even then, she wouldn’t stop him from leaving even if she could.

Jason stood up and took another step, keeping light on his feet and ready to duck to the side in case the kid had some kind of weapon, but nothing came flying at his vitals, and the kid choked on a sob instead of making a threat. No weapons, then. No fight left in him, either.

Jason reached into the darkness, fisted a handful of surprisingly firm fabric, pulled Robin out of the space like a kitten by his scruff, and promptly shoved him back down between the air conditioning units.

Jason’s head spun as he tried to process just how greatly fortune had smiled down upon him, because _seriously._ Robin, all alone, injured and weaponless, with the great big Bat nowhere to be found. Oh, the Replacement had been able to see him and had _known_ how fucked he was long enough that he must have been _terrified._

Jason chuckled darkly and pulled Drake out again. The Replacement’s chest was moving fast, but he wasn’t fighting. There weren’t any visible wounds, but in their line of work, broken ribs were par for the course. Those hurt like a bitch, which was certainly fitting for the brat who’d replaced him. Even with that pesky little domino in the way, Jason was sure he was crying. The Replacement’s tears…

His lips twitched up to a cruel smirk, and he settled Drake into a sitting position on one of the humming metal units, making sure to face him toward the street so Jason could see his face by the glow of the streetlights below, then pulled the glove from one hand and teased a finger under the sticky corner of the domino so he could get a grip on it. Drake’s breath hitched in terror, and he started to turn his face as he must have realized what Jason was doing, but he was too slow. Jason ripped the mask off Drake’s face and cast it aside.

Even in the dim light, Jason could see the raw skin around Drake’s eyes. That meticulously secretive part of him Bruce had trained, one of the few useful things Batman had done for him, whispered how dangerous it was to leave a mask lying around, especially with how much skin must have been taken when Jason had pulled it off so quickly without solvent, and Jason hummed with satisfaction. The amount of DNA left behind… That would be enough to prove Robin’s identity, definitely, if it was found by someone else before the sample could degrade. And since everyone knew who’d taken Timothy Drake in after his mother had been murdered until his father had woken from his coma, Bruce and Dickface would go down with him.

And Alfred, but Jason would bust Alfred out of jail and ship him back to England if it came down to it.

Judging by the way the Replacement gasped and shifted toward the mask, he’d come to the same conclusion, but Jason clamped his hand tight around Drake’s arm. There would be a bruise there tomorrow, if Jason let him live.

“Eyes over here, baby bird,” Jason teased.

Drake flinched and dropped his chin to his chest, but the trembling turned to full body shudders despite the small act of defiance. Wasn’t he cute?

Jason chuckled and brushed a gentle finger against the edge of the raw mask mark. Drake gasped and tried to turn away from Jason’s hand, but Jason followed the movement, keeping them skin to skin until Drake couldn’t move any farther.

“What’s wrong, _Robin_? Scared? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he purred.

Drake flinched again and clenched his eyes shut. The fear on his face was _delicious_. He needed to draw it out. He needed to see those big blue eyes, the terror as it finally dawned on him just what a mistake it was to have touched Jason’s colors.

Jason feathered bare fingers over Drake’s forehead, around the outline of his face, and under his jaw until he could pinch his chin and tilt his face up so that his eyes would meet Jason’s if they opened.

“It’s rude to not make eye contact when someone’s talking, Replacement.” Jason gave Drake’s chin a sharp pinch.

“Please, you said you wouldn’t hurt me,” Drake whispered. Pathetic. He didn’t even open his eyes.

Jason leaned close and rested their foreheads together. “I did, didn’t I? But I didn’t know it was you when I said that, and you’re special, aren’t you? Robin isn’t a kid, Robin’s a _target_. Batman’s target, meant to draw the fire and all the danger away from Batman while he does his dirty work. And targets are meant to be _hit_ , Timmy.”

Drake winced and yanked back sharply, but Jason dug his nail into the soft flesh under Drake’s chin and pulled him closer. Drake went nearly limp, like even that miniscule effort had drained all strength from him, and he hissed in pain. A hand came up, toward his ribs, but he froze and lowered it, like he thought maybe Jason hadn’t noticed where he was weak.

“Jason, please,” Drake begged, finally opening his glistening eyes.

Was he going to _cry_? Jason hoped so. “Please what? I’m helping you out here, baby bird. Birds with clipped wings can’t fly with the bats. You’ll thank me some day.”

But wouldn’t it be even better if there _was_ no “some day?” If Jason left Drake beaten and brutally murdered on Wayne Manor’s doorstep to prove that Bruce’s new Robin was no better than the last? Or, if he wanted to get _really_ creative, he could leave Drake in _pieces_ all over Gotham for Bruce to find. Let him piece together the corpse and what happened to him at the same time. And then, for the finale, after he’d a long night of tracking Drake down, limb by limb, Jason could leave Drake’s head on sitting Bruce’s pillow for Daddy to come home to.

That, Jason decided as he caressed Drake’s cheekbone in a mockery of affection, would be beautiful. If he was feeling particularly merciful, he might kill Drake _before_ he cut him up.

“Want to come with me, Replacement?” Jason brushed away the tears pooling in the corners of Drake’s eyes so he could see that fear without anything obscuring it.

But it wasn’t just fear that he saw when he looked into Drake’s eyes.

The pupils weren’t quite reacting the same, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot. It _could_ just be from crying and a concussion, but…

Jason laughed. “You got _fear_ _gassed_ , didn’t you? Oh, you just made everything so much better, Replacement. This is going to be so much _fun_.”

Drake’s chest lurched once in warning before he broke down into tears and started to weakly thrash, but it wasn’t hard for Jason to keep a hold on him. He started to go through the things he’d need for tonight. A hammer would be good, to smash the Replacement’s hands so he couldn’t escape once the gas wore off. Not that he would get far, but Jason didn’t want any surprises. Scissors would be useful to get that damn costume with all its parts off without accidentally tripping a booby trap that might stun anyone who took it off wrong. He couldn’t have Batman using the trackers in the suit to interrupt their fun. A car battery, a gun, a saw for later…there were so many possibilities.

Jason put one hand under Drake’s knees and the other behind his back and picked him up, pulling him against his chest and enjoying the gasp of pain as Jason disturbed his broken ribs.

A step forward caused a pained cry and another gasp brought a grin to his face. “What hurts more, walking or being a bitch?”

_What hurts more?_

Jason froze in his tracks.

_A, or B?_

Jason tried to take a step forward, but his feet were fixed to the ground. His breathing caught and released erratically. Laughter, cruel because it was fun, rang in his ears, but it wasn’t the Joker’s. It was his, chuckling as he carried a Robin off to a warehouse to hurt him even more than he’d been hurt.

_Forehand, or backhand?_

His muscles turned to nothing, but his grip on Drake didn’t shift. He was so _light_. Replacement was so small, so _young_ , how had he not noticed before?

There was a small, almost imperceptible, hitch of breath, and Drake— _Tim_ was crying. He was crying because he was scared. He was what, fourteen? Fifteen? The same age Jason had been when someone had caught _him_ and clipped _his_ wings. Made _him_ realize that there was no magic to Robin, just a little kid in a traffic light desperately clinging to a man and hoping to be loved. He remembered how terrifying it was, not knowing if he’d make it out as someone brutally beat him just because it was _fun_. To get at someone else.

A haze of green, so ever-present he hadn’t even realized how it had deepened, faded from his vision, leaving just Jason and the kid he’d beaten half to death months before on a roof, alone, in the middle of Gotham.

Jason took a deep, shuddering breath and squeezed Tim’s shoulder, not enough to hurt, but enough to feel his warmth and the weave of the Kevlar to draw himself back to his body. That victory, that sadistic glee at finding a scared little kid vulnerable and alone, turned to stomach-churning guilt, and Jason only barely managed to drop to his knees and set Tim on the gravel roof as gently as he could in a rush before he turned his head and threw up.

He heard scuffling as his body emptied him of absolutely everything in his stomach until he was left choking on dry heaves, and he expected the Repl—the _kid_ to be running, or maybe gearing up to clock Jason unconscious so he could escape back to Bruce, but when he looked up, Tim had barely managed to turn onto his stomach and crawl about six inches. Jason hadn’t felt any fractures, other than the ribs he assumed were bad, or felt any bones shifting, when he’d picked the kid up, so it was probably some new breed of fear gas. The kid _had_ seemed to be aware of Jason and what he’d been saying, too, so maybe he’d only gotten a mild dose.

Hell. Fucking _hell._

“Where’s the antidote?” Jason asked hoarsely, wiping his mouth on his still-gloved hand.

Tim made a panicked noise when he realized that Jason was back up and lurched forward, but he couldn’t catch himself, and he landed hard on his chest. Jason knew a thing or two about crawling with broken bones. That _hurt_.

Tim was scared, but he was already scared of Jason—Jason deserved it—and he was going to hurt himself more trying to escape, so Jason only hesitated a moment before placing a large, heavy hand on Tim’s lower back, away from his chest, and holding him down into the rough gravel. Tim still gasped, in pain or fear, but Jason just flinched and kept him pinned.

“Which pocket do you keep your antidotes in?” Jason asked again.

Tim pulled an arm slowly up to his head and buried his face in it. To keep Jason from seeing his tears as his chest shook with barely repressed sobs, or to keep the gravel out of his face…both were equally likely. Maybe equally true.

Jason swore and started sifting through the pockets of Tim’s utility belt. Tim squirmed and tried to crawl away until Jason shuffled over and knelt over him, one leg on either side pressed against the kid’s hips hard enough to keep him still without hurting him any more.

The antidote wasn’t in any of the back pockets, so Jason carefully flipped Tim over, ignoring the frightened yelp, so he could check the front. Tim kept his arm over his face and raised the other, but Jason could still see a glimmer of tears leaving streaks on his face. Jason ignored that too and kept looking, but found nothing. If Bruce had sent the kid out without antidotes…

Jason huffed and blinked rapidly to clear the green that was edged his vision. It faded a bit, but not entirely until he found three vials of fear gas antidote in the last pocket. It wouldn’t work completely—there were so many strains of fear gas that the antidote was just formulated to attack the usual main ingredients so that the fear would be manageable until a more refined serum could be synthesized—but it would hopefully help some.

Jason gently laced his fingers in between the fingers on one of Tim’s hands. The boy resisted, but he wasn’t able to stop Jason from pulling the hand away and holding it down against the gravel.

“P-please, Jason, not again, please don’t h-hurt me,” Tim begged, his voice catching on sobs. He tugged weakly on his arm, but Jason just tightened his grip and held on.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Robin. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” Jason took his free hand from Tim’s back and ran it down his own face. “God, I’m so awful. I’m just going to give you the antidote. Okay? Then I’ll…” Jason drew a blank. What _was_ he going to do, just _keep_ the kid? He could decide _after_ he’d given him the cure. “I’m not going to hurt you. Calm down.”

Tim’s eyes widened when he saw the syringe and he thrashed, harder enough to give Jason a struggle keeping him down, before Jason finally gave up, sat on his stomach, pinned the kid’s upper arm with his knee, and pressed his forearm down at the wrist with one hand as the other hand steadied the needle against Tim’s elbow. A vein shot was harder, but the antidote would start working much quicker than it would with a muscles shot, so it was worth it.

Once the needle was in, Tim gave up and went limp, completely still except the slight shaking of his chest as he sobbed silently before Jason had even depressed the plunger. Jason sighed and pressed down, but looked away once he was sure it was going smoothly. He wasn’t… It had been a long time, but he still wasn’t okay with needles or shots. Jason remembered one time after a fight with Scarecrow where Jason had seen Bruce injecting himself with an antidote. He’d screamed bloody murder, and Bruce, of course, had thought that Jason had been hit and forced him down, much like he was doing to Tim now, before injecting him with the antidote too. Jason had been doing a lot more thrashing and screaming than Tim was, though.

When he felt the plunger hit the bottom, he pulled the needle out of Tim’s arm and tossed it away without looking. No one would think twice about a dirty needle in Gotham. Not like…damn.

Jason pulled a bandage out of his own pocket, ripped it open, and pulled it taut over Tim’s wound. It would come off if Tim flexed his arm much, but, that tight, it would hopefully staunch the bleeding well enough. With that, he stood up, walked back over to where they’d been, and retrieved Tim’s mask. Dammit, he’d been such an asshole. While he was at it, he grabbed his helmet and clipped it to his belt.

When he walked back, the kid was still flat on his back and sobbing, silent except for the sharp breaths between cries, but Jason was no closer to knowing what to do with him.

If they were in any other city—maybe even another _part_ of Gotham—Jason would have left. His presence wasn’t going to help the kid emotionally at all, but he’d grown up in Crime Alley, he’d been _on_ the streets, and he knew what happened to kids all by themselves who couldn’t move fast enough to defend themselves. Even just leaving him on the roof was risking too much because fate was a bitch, and she didn’t like Robins.

Jason ran a hand down his face and thought. He wasn’t going to be able to stick the kid on a bike and drive him up to the manor, and he didn’t think that _he_ would be able to see its gates, or the cave, without triggering the Pit again. But…he had a safehouse, about four blocks from the roof they were on. It wouldn’t take that long to get Tim set up on the sofa and then leave. He’d lose a safe house, but it wouldn’t matter much. Penance, he supposed, for what he’d been planning to do and what he’d already done.

Jason knelt at Tim’s side. “I’m going to get you somewhere safe, Tim. I promise, I won’t hurt you. You’re safe now.”

He gave it a few moments to sink in before he moved, but Tim was no less a blubbering mess when Jason slipped his hands, far more carefully this time, under Tim’s knees and back. Tim started crying harder, but when he was held against Jason’s chest, his breath hitched and he turned his face to hide in Jason’s neck before crying his gasping sobs again. Jason startled, then had to stop himself from comforting Tim with a hand rubbed against his back. Without knowing the precise location of Tim’s broken ribs, that could go from 0 to torturous in the space of millimeters.

“You’re safe,” Jason repeated instead, turning his head and breathing the words into the kid’s hair. God, he was so _light_. The bo staff made so much more sense now, because Timothy Drake sure as hell wasn’t knocking out criminals with his fists as tiny as he was. Was Alfred even _feeding_ him? Maybe the kid was religious and didn’t stick around for Alfred’s Sunday morning crepes or something.

“Please,” Tim gasped sharply, suddenly reaching up to clutch his chest. His face screwed up with pain and fear, and Jason swore. He didn’t use pain killers if he could help it— _needles_ were bad enough—but there would be _something_ at his safehouse, just because sometimes he needed to not black out from pain while he was stitching himself back together. Jason didn’t know if that was what Tim was asking for, or if Tim was just having a panic attack because Jason was holding him, but he needed painkillers and rest.

“I know. It hurts. I’m going to make it stop hurting as soon as I can, alright?” Jason told him, walking for the edge of the roof as quickly as he could while still keeping his gait level to avoid hurting Tim’s ribs any more than they already were. If Tim ended up with a rib in his lung because of Jason, he was going to save everyone the trouble and go dig himself back into his grave.

He wasn’t expecting a response, but Tim pulled back slowly from Jason’s neck and looked forward.

When he saw where they were headed, his already pale face turned sheet white and he threw his arms around Jason’s neck, clinging like his life depended on it.

“Please don’t drop me! Jason, Jason, please! Please, I won’t fight you, please, you can do what you want, I’ll stop crying, but please don’t drop me!” Tim pleaded, shrieking in his ear.

Jason winced and pulled his head away in case Tim started yelling again, but you reap what you sow, and Past Jason was a terrible farmer.

Jason raised his ungloved hand and started to card his calloused fingers through Tim’s sweaty hair. After a few brushes, he tried to pull Tim back down to a more easily-balanced position, but Tim just tightened his death grip around Jason’s neck.

“I don’t want to die,” Tim keened desperately.

Jason paused. “Mood.”

Tim obviously did _not_ find that as funny as Jason had, and he started sobbing audibly for the first time, loud, full body cries so different from his nearly-silent tears from earlier. _I’ll stop crying_. He’d assumed the kid had thought crying out loud was a weakness, but that phrase… Had Tim been told before not to cry out loud? If it had been Bruce—

Bruce had let Jason cry out loud, the maybe three times Jason had cried in front of the man. Maybe he’d banned all loud crying, seeing as he’d shown signs of becoming progressively more assholish with each kid, but Jason didn’t really think he’d have intentionally emotionally scarred the kid. Not without the Pit’s influence, at least.

“I’m not going to drop you, baby bird,” Jason promised. “I’ve got a safehouse a few blocks from here. You’ll be safe there until Bruce can come get you. I promise, I’m not going to hurt you any more.”

Tim whimpered in unbelief, but Jason figured that actions spoke louder than words sometimes. He pulled out his grapple, shot it off, then swung down to the alley below. He didn’t like the idea of walking the streets at night, but everyone was already inside, and he didn’t like the idea of roof-hopping with an injured small teenager in his arms.

Tim relaxed just slightly when Jason’s feet hit the ground. Jason could feel the tentative way he let his muscles loosen and the reluctance with which he nearly released Jason’s neck and lowered himself back down into Jason’s cradling hold. The sobs petered off, but Tim kept his arms around Jason’s neck and hid his face.

“See? I told you. Safe.”

Tim said nothing.

Jason looked both ways before slipping from the alley and sticking to the shadows the whole way to his safehouse. He kept an eye on the ground for crooks and robbers, and an eye on the rooftops in case Batman or Nightwing showed up for a fight. If it was just one of them, he could probably chuck Timmy and run, but if they both showed up, he was probably going to have to fight one of them, and he didn’t fancy facing them without the roar of the Pit in his ears covering the searing pain of fear and rejection in his chest.

Batman must have still been fighting with Scarecrow, though, because they got back to Jason’s safehouse unaccosted. His limbs were trilling with adrenaline after all that, and he had more trouble than usual unlocking the front door and disengaging the traps. Doing it all one handed didn’t help, either.

When he finally got the door open, he felt Tim flinch again. Jason flinched too, in sympathy, because he remembered going through a door.

He hadn’t walked out.

But Tim would.

Jason carried Tim over the threshold and closed the door behind him, throwing the locks but not engaging the traps yet. Batman could pick the locks, and they’d be enough to protect Tim until he had the time. _Jason_ wasn’t staying around.

There was a ratty old sofa with plenty of questionable stains that had come with the apartment, and Jason hadn’t bothered to replace it with anything more sanitary or buy a bed, so he sat down on the sofa and angled his body so that Tim’s back was against the cushions and removed his hands. Tim kept his grip for a few seconds longer, long enough that Jason thought he was going to have to pull him off, before letting go and settling back against the upholstery.

Jason stood up and started for the bathroom where he kept his medical supplies, but he paused at a sudden strangled sound from Tim.

Jason practically crashed into the couch in his rush to get to the kid because _hell_ , if the Replacement was having an allergic reaction to the toxin, Jason could _not_ deal with that with his first aid kit and limited medical experience.

Tim’s face was all screwed up with pain, and he wasn’t breathing right. Had he somehow broken a rib and punctured a lung? That Jason _could_ do something about, but he didn’t want to do anything his body might interpret as an excuse to be violent against the kid. Not if he could help it, because he did _not_ trust himself.

“I’m sorry,” Tim sobbed, reaching up with one hand and grasping the leather collar of Jason’s coat. “I’m so-sor-sorry!”

Jason wrapped his hand against Tim’s gloved one, staring back into those glistening blue eyes in shock.

“The _fuck_ are you apologizing for, kid?” Jason asked, a little harsher than he intended to, but it was goddamned annoying for the kid to play the repentant sinner when he should have been the fucking martyr. Hell, Jason had been prepared to _make_ him a literal martyr. He should _not_ be the one apologizing. “ _I’m_ sorry I hurt you. You didn’t do shit to me.”

Tim’s face screwed up even more. “But you’re leaving me.”

….Jason supposed that he’d only plotted the kid’s brutal and grisly murder in his head, but he would have thought the smiles and ripping off the mask and that shit would have tipped Tim off to the fact that Jason had been up to absolutely no good, and would return to doing absolutely no good if the primordial ooze that had brought him back fully to life got the whim to return.

“You’re safer alone,” Jason assured him.

Tim made a terrible keening noise that made Jason want to throw him out the window and swaddle him in bubble wrap equal measure. To keep his worse instincts restrained, he did nothing, but that just made Tim start crying again because the kid was a never ending fountain of tears and snot. He wasn’t dying, though, and still needed medical attention, so Jason dug his fingers under Tim and started to worm them off.

Tim screamed in terror and surged forward so suddenly that Jason had no chance but to catch him and hold onto him as Tim sobbed desperately into his shoulder, so high pitched it was nearly screaming. It made him sound even younger than he really was, so much more _breakable_. Jason kept his hands free.

Tim pressed his face _hard_ into Jason’s chest. “Please, please I don’t want to be alone. I—I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll do what you want, but please don’t leave me all alone again. Please, I—You can’t—Please don’t be mad at me, _please_ don’t leave me alone!”

“I—Kid, you’re going to be fine. Bruce is going to be along to get you soon.” He gave Tim’s shoulder and awkward _thump_ before trying to pry the boy off. “Nothing can hurt you now.”

 _Except me_ , Jason didn’t add. He couldn’t feel the Pit at the moment, but if he got too mad, or too upset…Tim didn’t deserve that.

Tim fought to hold onto Jason harder than he’d fought to keep Jason from dropping him off a roof. Hopefully, that meant that the antidote was starting to work and the kid’s limbs were waking back up, but it was annoying as hell.

“ _Replacement_ —”

“I’m sorry I took Robin!” Tim cried, cutting off anything Jason could have said. “You can have it back! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but please don’t make me be alone!”

_Robin._

Jason’s stomach twisted and green flickered in his vision for just a moment before Jason forced it back.

“I can’t go back to being Robin, kid. I can’t even go back to the manor,” Jason whispered hoarsely.

“You can!” Tim cried. “Bruce will let you back, please! I’m—I didn’t take your spot, I’m not his kid, ‘cause _you’re_ his kid and he loves you and misses you so much but you won’t come _home_ , and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—I—”

Tim was hyperventilating. He was going to give himself a heart attack. He was going to give _Jason_ a heart attack, and Jason wasn’t even letting himself consider Tim’s words. He couldn’t go back, not after what he’d done and after what Bruce _hadn’t_ done.

With a sigh, he stood up, taking his new necklace with him before he lowered himself down onto the couch and lay out with Tim choking on his own tears on Jason’s chest.

Jason raised a hand and carded it through Tim’s hair. He noted with a twinge of annoyance that Bruce was letting Tim keep his hair longer than he had let Jason keep it. Tim wasn’t legally Bruce’s, though, so maybe he didn’t get a say. Bruce had always said that keeping his hair short was to protect him, though, and he would have thought he’d have insisted with Tim. Maybe Bruce had only meant to protect him from trying to replicate that stupid mullet Dick had had when Jason first met him.

Tim gasped as he tried to pull himself back and buried his face against Jason’s throat. Under Jason’s chin. Where Jason couldn’t see his face, again. Trying not to let Jason hear him cry.

“I’m sorry,” Tim whispered.

“Stop apologizing,” Jason murmured back. He couldn’t open his jaw far without dislodging Tim.

Tim sniffed hard and shook his head. “But it’s my _fault_. You’re mad at me, so you won’t go home, and now _you’re_ sad, and _Bruce_ is sad, and _Alfred’s_ sad, and _Dick_ is sad, and _I’m_ sad because you’re Robin and I only wanted to be good, but you _hate_ me, and _everyone_ always hates me eventually and I don’t know _why_ —”

Tim’s voice trailed off into muffled sobs that pressed against Jason’s throat in an erratic rhythm as Tim’s head bounced with the effort of trying to restrain his emotions. Because apparently he thought Jason would hate him for that.

And Jason had tried to kill him for less.

Jason sighed and patted Tim’s head. “I don’t hate you. I didn’t—I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m not going to leave now.”

They stayed like that, Tim crying and Jason whispering repetitions of the same snippets of comfort that somehow seemed to mean the world to the kid until he finally went still on Jason’s chest. His breathing was even too, and there were no fresh tears on the soggy part of Jason’s neck.

Sleeping at last.

Jason stifled a yawn and closed his own eyes. The events of the night were pounding behind his eyes in the beginnings of what would no doubt be a blinding headache soon enough, but with the slight weight of a small life on his chest, there was no way he could get up.

He didn’t dare fall asleep, though. He didn’t want to risk losing control of the Pit while he was sleeping, or wake up with a nightmare and attack the kid.

He could shimmy enough to be able to reach his cellphone in his pocket, and he passed about an hour scrolling through an ebook before he felt the telling half-tensing of Tim’s body against his and the slight stutter in the even breathing. Bat training, might have fooled a chump, but Jason was onto him. Or under him.

“I know you’re awake, kid,” Jason said, poking a finger into Tim’s cheek. He couldn’t see Tim’s face, still hidden under Jason’s chin, but he could feel a surprising amount of squish there for someone so skinny. He poked him again, wondering how many times he could get away with before Tim tried to bite his finger off.

The tension Tim had tried to hide drew up. Jason could feel Tim’s entire body tense like a coil about to spring, and felt a sickening dread in his stomach. If the kid tried to fight him in _Robin’s_ colors, the Pit was going to come back, and Jason was going to beat the fucking shit out of him.

He wrapped an arm around Tim’s chest, careful to avoid the sore spot, and held him down. He kept his grip confining, warning, but not painful.

“Morning, sleeping beauty. How you feeling?” Jason asked with forced hospitality.

Tim flinched and tried to pull off, but Jason pressed him down more insistently.

“Let me go, Jason,” Tim said, his voice even and low in warning. There was a layer of fear, there, and exhaustion. It looked like the antidote had done its work while Tim was sleeping, but not completely, even though Tim was trying to hide that fact.

Jason sighed. “You’re the one who didn’t want me to leave you alone. You were quite determined, really, to keep me with you.”

“Bruce will beat you up if you hurt me again,” Tim warned, not even acknowledging the fact that Jason had just spent more than an hour _not_ hurting him and fucking hugging him like a teddy bear.

“If I wanted to hurt you,” Jason told him simply, but he could hear an edge in his voice. His own, or the Pit? “I would have done that while you were crying like a baby on my chest. Or sleeping right here on top of me.”

Tim flinched and tried again for another escape, flailing his limbs ineffectually. All he managed to do was hurt his own ribs that he’d apparently forgotten were broken.

“Jason, please,” Tim said in a horrified pleading tone. “Please, whatever you’re doing, stop. You don’t need to prove anything.”

Jason sighed and clapped Tim’s shoulder. He was getting too keyed up, and the Replacement needed to calm down if he didn’t want to get shot. _Telling_ him that was too likely to panic him, but it was the truth.

“I’ve proven everything I wanted to, Timmers,” he announced, shoving Tim off him and hoping Tim had enough sense to stay down. “I’m not going to hurt you. Now, sit down and I’ll find you something for those ribs.”

Tim flinched, but stayed on the couch, thankfully, while Jason went to the bathroom and found the painkillers. As an afterthought, he dropped by the kitchen, got a bottle of water from the fridge and an icepack from the freezer, then walked back over to the couch.

Jason set the icepack on Tim’s stomach and let him adjust it to his preference, and he opened the water bottle for him because he wasn’t sure Tim was up to doing it himself, but the pills he measured out carefully himself before returning the bottle to one of his interior pockets that would be the hardest to snatch it from.

“Take these,” he instructed. “Ibuprofen.”

Tim looked at the pills skeptically and inspected them closely before the fight went out of him and he let his shoulders slump before he put both pills in his mouth and swallowed them with a swig from the water bottle.

Tim frowned to himself and didn’t look at Jason for several moment before seeming to decide that if it _was_ a poison, it wasn’t going to kill him immediately, and glanced up at Jason.

“What are you doing?” Tim asked, his voice shaking with effort to keep it level.

Jason shrugged and bent down to trail a hand through Tim’s hair absently. Unlike before, Tim flinched and turned his head. Jason frowned and pulled his hand back.

“Y—Do you remember anything?”

Tim inhaled shakily and looked at some point on the ceiling as his face screwed up with effort. “I—Bruce and I were fighting someone…”

“Scarecrow.”

“Scarecrow?” Tim squeaked, then laughed humorlessly. “Oh, that explains a lot.”

Jason nodded. “Anything else?”

Tim bit his lip and glanced up at Jason, then hesitantly shook his head. “I—you were there, and you were—I couldn’t tell. You were being nice to me, and I don’t know why.”

Jason hesitated, not sure what to say. “You’re a kid.”

“That didn’t stop you before,” Tim edged, suspicion nearly hiding fear and exhaustion in his voice.

“But it should have.”

Tim bit his lip, staring at Jason searchingly before apparently deciding either that Jason was telling the truth, or that Jason was lying through his teeth and there was no use fighting him. He slumped back into the couch cushions and ran his hands over his face with a shuddering breath.

“I’m going to wake up, and this is all going to be a dream, aren’t I?” Tim asked, his voice wobbling with what sounded like more tears.

“I could pinch you if it helps,” Jason offered. Maybe then he would stop crying.

Tim parted his fingers to give Jason an incredulous look, but his hands were starting to tremble so Jason could barely even see it.

“I haven’t got another antidote,” he warned Tim. Unless Tim kept another dose on him somewhere, he was going to be stuck like that for a while.

Tim shook his head, but his breathing was hard. “I—It worked. This just happens?”

Jason raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “The antidote not working on you _just happens_ , and you _haven’t_ told Bruce?”

“It _did_ work, it’s just…” Tim glanced up at Jason, then quickly darted his eyes away. “Fear gas always leaves me… _rattled_ afterward. It’s just…real anxiety, I guess, that the gas reminded me about. Normally…”

“Normally what?”

Tim worried at his lip with his teeth again and turned his face away so he didn’t have to meet Jason’s eyes. “N-normally, Bruce holds me. Or Dick. Alfred, if Bruce and Dick are injured.”

Jason did his best to force down a curl of jealousy, but that _stung_. The _Replacement_ got cuddles while _Jason_ got lectures.

Tim went on, apparently not noticing the flickering green in Jason’s eyes. “Bruce says that I’m _touch starved_ because…he _says_ my parents neglected me, but they were just gone a lot. With their work.”

“What does _gone a lot_ mean?” Jason snapped, latching onto the first thing that wasn’t how much he hated Bruce.

Tim flinched, apparently clocking that added annoyance. “A—a few months at a time. But their work is— _was_ —really _important._ ”

And just like that, the green is ebbing away again, or at least finding a new target. Months? They left their kid for _months_?

“Didn’t you have a babysitter?”

The shrimp had the nerve to look _offended_. “I’m old enough to take care of myself. I just…can I go home now? To the manor? I—I really want a hug.”

Tim’s voice cracked with tears on the last word, and shit.

“We’re half an hour away, and there’s no way you’re going to be able to hold on that long,” Jason pointed out. “I’ve only got a motorcycle. No car.”

He _could_ call Bruce to come get his bird, there was no way he was doing that. That would set off the Pit for sure, probably even if Jason ducked out before he got there, and he was pretty sure the kid was going to die if he was left alone.

Tim’s face crumpled in grief. “I—But!”

His chest started to rise and fall rapidly, bordering on hyperventilating again, as he sobbed. And whatever the kid said about being all better now, Jason didn’t buy it for a second. _All better_ kids didn’t cry like that, so desperate and alone.

Or maybe he really was all better, but he’d woken up in a strange place, injured, and alone with a man who’d brutally attacked him before. Maybe that was the normal reaction to a touch starved, terrified kid who just wanted his pseudo family to hug him.

Jason was…he didn’t think that death technically nullified the adoption paperwork, and he already owed the kid a favor for beating him up that first time and ripping off his mask. This definitely counted for that favor, though. After that night, they were even.

Before he could chicken out, Jason scooped Tim up into his arms and dropped down onto the couch with him, carefully so as not to plunge a broken rib into his apparently-pseudo-adopted-brother’s vital organs. Tim gasped and tensed, but snatch a fistful of Jason’s shirt and pulled himself close.

“Jason?” Tim’s voice wobbled.

“Sh, baby bird. I’m saying sorry.” Jason leaned the side of his face to the top of Tim’s head to get in as much surface area as possible.

Weren’t you supposed to do skin to skin contact for touch starvation? Jason wasn’t stripping or anything, no matter what the favor, but he tugged off his other glove and hugged his arms around Tim so that he could hold the bare spot between the end of his sleeve and the beginning of his glove on both sides.

Tim half-leaned into Jason, then pulled back so he could stare at Jason’s face. “You’re not going to hurt me?”

Jason nodded. A part of him rolled its eyes at having to explain that yet again, but he remembered Bruce having to reassure him a million times after Jason had done something stupid that he wasn’t going to be beaten. Bruce had never even hit him, either, but Jason had beaten Tim half to death as collateral damage in a fight with something else. The fact that he hadn’t launched himself out of Jason’s hands and run for the door was already surprising.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated. “I—I know it’s my fault, but the Pit…I was never mad at _you_. I’m so sorry you got caught up in this all.”

Tim shuddered deeply and practically collapsed against Jason’s chest and leaned his head against his chest. “Promise?”

“On Alfred’s moustache,” Jason vowed.

Tim snickered at that and pulled his legs up to his chest, dipping his knees under Jason’s arm to get himself all bundled up under Jason’s body. Confined, completely trusting Jason not to flip on him, but also being as physically consumed by Jason’s body as was possible without Jason literally laying on top of him like a too-big weighted blanket.

After a few minutes, Jason moved one of his hands from Tim’s arm to under his cape and started to rub firm circles into his back. Tim melted and Jason could feel his smile against Jason’s shirt.

When he’d been little, he’d thought about what it would be like to have a sibling. An older sibling who knew what they were doing and could take care of Mom and fight off Dad like Jason couldn’t. A younger sibling to give him the courage to be the older sibling he wished he had. He’d technically had an older brother, even though Dickwad was never around until near the end, but he’d never had a younger sibling. Whatever Timothy Drake was to his estranged adoptive father was probably the closest thing Jason was going to get. And with the small warm body pressed to his, trusting Jason more than Jason trusted himself…it was nice. Really nice in a way he hadn’t been expecting. In the League, he’d hurt no one outside of attacks and training, but they’d feared him and the favor he’d been given. In his crappy living room in Crime Alley, he held a kid he’d nearly murdered, but the kid just snuggled in closer and expected that Jason would protect him. Expected that Jason wasn’t the monster everyone else seemed to think he was.

“With the Pit,” Jason started, tucking Tim’s head under his chin. He felt Tim tilt his head up to look at him, but he didn’t tense or try to get away. “I can’t control it. I can’t promise I won’t flip out on you again. But I’m sorry. You never deserved any of that, but right now, you’re safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Tim’s smile deepened and he wrapped his own arms around Jason’s neck, wordless for a few moments. “Thank you, Jason.”

Jason squeezed the kid a bit tighter. “Of course, Robin.”

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Okay, write, like, a five hundred word introduction before Jason takes Tim back to his safehouse.  
> My brain: 1000 words?  
> Me: No, _500_ words.  
> My brain: _1500_ words?  
> Me: NO, _**500**_ words.  
> My brain: _**2000**_ words?  
> Me:.....  
> My brain: _**2500**_ words?????  
> Me: NOit's too late, isn't it?  
> My brain: *shrugs* yup
> 
> So, yeah, this got out of hand. E, I blame you.
> 
> Edit: Envy wrote a second chapter/Tim POV/Bruce reaction! It's beautiful!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [green eggs and ham](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28230981) by [envysparkler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysparkler/pseuds/envysparkler)




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